Find out how 322 businesses across the world are performing on commitments to reduce and report corporate air travel emissions.
AT = Air Travel BT = Business Travel
*Actual emissions if reported, estimated from BT emissions otherwise. Emissions in tCO2e including non-CO2 effects are disclosed if they are reported by the company. **As of January 2023. ***Between 2018 and 2021, with thus a maximum of 4.
Companies that submitted new data and improved their performance
Commitment and reporting data have been diligently collected by Transport & Environment. Companies are invited to submit new data for review and improve their performance by contacting info@travelsmartcampaign.org.
There are many aspects to the sustainability of a company’s business model and practices.
This ranking covers corporate flying, which is key to reducing emissions and to the future of sustainable aviation.
Broader aspects of a company’s business model should also be addressed for it to be considered a leader in sustainability.
In the first edition of the ranking published in 2022, 229 companies were selected. These were chosen from the 2021 Top 100 Corporate Flyers List, the Science-Based Targets (SBTi) database, and through a selection of European companies based upon market capitalisation, business travel commitments or reporting.
Last year’s list was kept as a template, although we removed a limited number of companies, if they were relatively small or did not fly much for business. We then decided to add large companies, susceptible to flying a lot for business. For the 17 countries chosen to be part of the 2023 ranking (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States), we included the countries’ largest companies in terms of employees, the top 10 companies by market capitalization, and the companies with the highest business travel emissions in the CDP dataset.
The ranking now includes 322 companies.
The ranking grades the 322 companies according to ten indicators, relating to air travel emissions, reduction targets and reporting. Each indicator was broken down into varying levels of success, which gave a company a specific amount of points.
For example, for the first indicator on commitment (i.e. does a company have a reduction commitment and does it specifically mention business air travel), a company was awarded 0 points for no target, 0.5 points for a broad emissions reduction target, 1 point for a business travel emissions reduction target, and 1.5 points for an air travel emissions reduction target.
For a detailed overview of the ten indicators and how many points were attributed for each level of success, please refer to Table 2 of the full briefing.
We divided the range for total score, which goes from -1 to 14 points, in four equal parts corresponding to categories A, B, C or D. Companies are categorised based on their total score.
Points are deducted for not disclosing emissions and for being a major emitter (i.e. having business travel emissions above 280,000 tCO2). The minimum score (-1) represents a company which has no emissions reduction target, and either has no reporting or is a major emitter.
An A grade corresponds to a score of 10.5 points or above. A company with the grade B has a total score ranging from 6.5 to 10. The grade C was given to all those companies with a score between 3 and 6. And the lowest grade, D, was for all companies scoring 2.5 points or less.
The ranking was updated to include more companies this year (see question 1). In addition, we extended the number of indicators and the point system. The geographic scope was extended to include India.
As the impacts of climate change are more visible than ever, and the harmful effects of fossil-fueled aviation on the planet are clear, we tightened the criteria in this edition of the ranking. General company-wide targets, such as Scope 3 targets, were not considered relevant enough. We only granted points for targets specific to business travel. Similarly, we did not attribute points to target achievement dates after 2030.
Two new indicators were added in this edition of the ranking. 0.5 points were attributed to companies reporting their corporate environmental data in CDP. CDP offers the most comprehensive standard and comparable dataset for company environmental data disclosure. Secondly, this year’s ranking looks at reporting of non-CO2 effects associated with business travel. Aviation’s non-CO2 effects are estimated to warm the atmosphere twice as much as its CO2 effects only. It is thus capital to make non-CO2 reduction a priority in the coming years. We have thus granted an additional 0.5 points to companies which report the full climate impacts of business flying, including non-CO2 effects.
